January Eleventh
by Smeepalicious
Summary: Happy birthday to WOWZAcoolBEANS. 11:59 on January Tenth seems like just another minute of just another day. The change the world can undergo in a mere sixty seconds is really remarkable, isn't it? Just how many Bakuras can the world handle at once!


This oneshot is a present for the lovely and fabulous miss **WowzaCoolBeans**, most wonderful of sisters. Finals have kept me from finishing this on time, and until the first volume of the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya is available at the video store, this meager gift will have to do. For you, Beans, and happy birthday.

On a cold and dreary night in a snowy suburb of a nameless city completely devoid of bishounen of any persuasion, a clock began to chime throughout the town. This was really rather odd, as chiming clocks had gone out of vogue quite some time ago and there was not a single chiming clock remaining in the neighborhood, let alone one powerful enough to echo across the entirety of the sleepy little hamlet. On the twelfth chime of this inexplicable clock, the page reading January 10 fell of its own volition from every wall calendar in the village and all fluttered dramatically to the floor as the 11th of January 2009 began.

It is, I suppose, fortunate that this quiet suburban village was populated almost entirely by the elderly, incontinent, and boring, whose strict nine p.m. bedtimes kept them far away from the unusual activity occurring in the middle of the night in the middle of a dimly-lit, poorly-plowed street in the middle of the dimly-lit, poorly-plowed subdivision in which our story takes place. If any of the boring residents of this suburb _had_ been passing the home in the middle of this street they would have died immediately of cardiac arrest. Not from terror, no, although the giant golden pyramid descending from a swirling temporal rift in the sky above the house would intimidate any rational human being. No, these poor, unfortunate citizens would never even have seen this pyramid, large and shiny though it was, for there on the sidewalk was a sight delectable enough to make any innocent bystander's poor heart explode with _moe_ before they even had the chance to glance upward.

There were five boys standing on the street arguing rather heatedly. Two spoke in rapid Japanese; a comparatively quiet boy with bright green eyes and a crisp white button-down who seemed somewhat miffed by the situation, and a sharp-fanged, wild-haired, crimson-eyed boy whose rage was tangible on his face. He railed at the other three boys, arms flailing and spittle flying. This boy's mirror image, whose narrow eyes were brown instead of crimson and who was draped in a long black trench coat had adopted a more stoic, passive-aggressive approach, hissing threats dangerously in a low British accent. Standing behind this boy as though hiding was another quiet one with brown eyes and a dorky sweater looking absolutely terrified. Standing to the side, kohl-lined grey eyes wide with fascination, poking at the snow on the ground was a bare-chested, red-robed man whose dark skin, manly scar, and muscular physique placed him in contrast with the rest of the pale, skinny boys on the street. The one thing all these boys had in common, though, was long, spiky hair the same color of the snow that lined the walkway.

If any onlooker had been fluent in Japanese, English, and Ancient Egyptian, before their heart gave out they might have had time to notice that the five boys were arguing about whether it was advisable to ring the doorbell of the house in front of which they stood at midnight in the middle of the week, and if so, who would have the honor of doing so. Or, rather, that four of the boys were arguing, and one of the boys, being the King of Thieves and good at things like this, had already crossed around to the back of the house, vaulted over the fence into the backyard, and begun to scale the wall up to a window overlooking the rose garden. Ryou tugged on Yami no Bakura's arm and pointed meekly in the direction of the Thief King's sandal tracks, while Bakura just set off to follow them leaving the Spirit of the Millennium Ring to his trench coat-clad devices. With a snarl of rage, Yami no Bakura dragged Ryou in the direction of the back yard and the Spirit of the Ring followed, long coat and aura of unspeakable evil billowing behind him.

When the two kinder-looking boys and their sinister doppelgangers had crossed into the backyard, they were met with the sight of a gold-trimmed crimson hem whipping out of sight through a second-floor window. Grumbling, Yami no Bakura and the Spirit of the Ring began to scale the wall, much less gracefully than the Thief King, but more effectively than their weaker hosts, whom they had to hoist through the window after them when they had entered the house.

The Thief King had crouched on the desk sitting beneath the window, sandaled feet resting in spaces between the thickly piled jewelry, trinkets, and accumulated detritus. When the others hoisted themselves up behind him he leapt down to give them room, landing soundlessly on the carpet, avoiding the room's general disarray with well-practiced ease born of navigating the piled treasures of ancient tombs. Ryou and Bakura were much less graceful. When Yami no Bakura hoisted Ryou after in into the window, he rested, unbalanced, on the window ledge, arms windmilling before he caught himself and hopped down, relieved. Bakura was not so lucky; when his own darker half lifted him into the room his foot slipped on a patch of snow and he faceplanted into a jewelry box, scattering almost two-dozen beaded bracelets and sliding headfirst off the desk and into a small garbage can near the edge. His legs flailed in the air for a moment before the weight of his body unbalanced the small bin and he fell backwards, landing with a massive crash directly on an algebra textbook and a stack of novels. He twitched like a bug for a few seconds, garbage spilling out around his shoulders as the bin fell off his head. The other four heads in the room turned towards the occupant of the bed in the far corner of the room. Despite Bakura's racket, the girl in the bed was sleeping soundly.

The light from an iPod playing videos on her bedside table provided the little illumination in the room. It flashed brightly colored cartoons with exaggerated voices, and at first the boys paid it little heed, but a few choice words caught their attention.

"_Once I gain all seven Millennium Items, I shall use their vaguely established powers to destroy the world! But first, I'm going to beat you in a card game_," the tinny voice spoke out of the machine. The Thief King seemed merely to be fascinated by the technology, poking at the machine, and the Japanese-speaking Ryou and Yami no Bakura simply tilted their heads inquisitively and said nothing, unable to understand why Bakura and the Spirit of the Ring had flown into a rage.

"I do _not_ sound like that!"

"Is this making fun of Duel Monsters?"

"When did they videotape my Shadow Duel with the Pharaoh?!"

"_Shhh!_" The Thief King gesticulated for silence as the girl in the bed stirred, drawing their attention towards her once more.

They couldn't deny that she was absolutely adorable. Her reddish brown hair fanned across her pillow, and her sweet face was relaxed in sleep. They looked on, mouths agape, drooling.

"There she is… WOWZAcoolBEANS…"

"I want to wake her up."

"No, me!"

"Why wake her up first? I just want to kiss her _now._"

"Yami, you pervert."

"Shut up, you idiots! She'll wake up!" Five voices and three languages erupted in a massive squabble, yelling, gnashing, and brawling. When words failed to gain them the upper hand, they began beating on one another, with fists, feet, and Duel Monsters cards flying. Ryou and Bakura hid behind a basket piled high with laundry, trembling in fear. Diabound, Dark Necrofia, and Man Eater Bug sprang to life, filling the room near to bursting with their shadowy evil bulk as their equally evil masters continued to rip at each other.

"She will be mine!"

"No! I will love her ten times more than you!"

"You don't even know the first thing about this time period, thief!"

In all the commotion, nobody noticed when Beans opened bleary eyes.

She blinked.

She saw three monsters, five handsome men, and a shadowy aura of pure evil filling her bedroom.

She blinked again.

"… AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" She pulled her blankets up around her, vaulted out of bed, and ran for the door. She screamed all the way out the front door and into the snowy street, so blinded by sheer terror that she neglected to grab a jacket or shoes. She shivered for a few moments in the middle of the road, but a loud roaring behind her made her spin around. Her brief, fifteen-year life flashed before her eyes as the single headlight of a motorcycle careened out of nowhere in the darkness straight in her direction. She screamed again, now hoarse with expressions of terror, but the motorcycle fishtailed to a halt inches from her shivering form. A strong hand reached out from the bike's helmeted owner and draped a leather jacket around her shoulders.

"Need a lift?" the boy said in a heavy Australian accent, shaking his spiky red-brown hair out from his helmet as he handed it to her. She took it and gratefully climbed on board, leaving the five gape-mouthed Bakuras staring after her, splattered in the slush displaced by Valon's hasty exit.

"…"

"…"

"This is your fault, thief."

"MY fault?!"

"Both of you inferior beings be quiet. You lost me my dark queen!"

"YOUR queen?!"

"Please… Yami…" the two quieter boys said in unison, but they were ignored. The giant seething crater of destruction that their angry shadow game left in its wake was roped off in police tape the next day. Beans's family filed a police report and issued a reward for the return of their two daughters. Beans had disappeared in the middle of the night, and her parents, awoken by the sounds of a magical battle of epic proportions below their bedroom window, had looked outside to see Beans's sister Smeep charge into a swirling void of shadows and leave looking extremely pleased with herself, holding the end of a chain hooked to the brand new collars of five exceedingly attractive white-haired young men. The only clue to their daughters' whereabouts that they could give was that a strange, blank-eyed man in a turban and long robe had handed them a message written in hieroglyphics. Comparing it to the hieroglyphic dictionaries Smeep had left behind, they discovered that it read "Happy birthday, WOWZAcoolBEANS."

After that day, the two girls were never seen again. Where they went, where they are today, and how Shadi managed to capitalize hieroglyphics, the world may never know.


End file.
